HONG KONG: Asian sides will qualify for the 2031 Women’s Football World Cup via a standalone competition for the first time, the continent’s governing body said on Friday.

The Asian Football Confederation announced it would create a three-round preliminary competition starting in 2027 to determine the continent’s qualifiers for the finals.

The host nation for the 2031 tournament has yet to be decided.

Participants have previously been decided by performances at the Asian Games or Women’s Asian Cup, with Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines joining co-hosts Australia as the continent’s representatives in the 2023 edition.

The new format will see the lowest-ranked teams feature in the opening round to determine qualifiers for a 24-nation second phase, which will include the continent’s top eight sides.

Teams will then be divided into six four-nation groups to face off in a single round-robin centralised league format with the top-two finishers advancing to the third round.

Three groups of four teams will then compete in a home-and-away group format with the number of qualifiers for the finals determined by the continent’s allocation.

The next edition of the Women’s World Cup will be played in Brazil in 2027, with the Women’s Asian Cup — to be hosted by Australia one year earlier — acting for the last time as the continent’s qualifiers for the finals.

The decision to create the qualifying tournament was taken by the confederation’s executive committee in a series of moves to overhaul the calendar for women’s football in the region.

A new two-phase qualifying competition for the 2029 edition of the Women’s Asian Cup, to be played in Uzbekistan, has also been launched.

The preliminaries for the 2028 Olympic Games will be streamlined to feature the top eight finishers from the 2026 Women’s Asian Cup, down from the 24-nation qualifiers that determined Asia’s representatives in Paris this year.

Published in Dawn, September 14th, 2024